Tim and Jeremy are both waiters at a restaurant in downtown New York City. During slow times at work, to stave off boredom when it is slow, the two young men draw pictures. These pictures are made using ink and what is called the "Triple Dupe Pad," a book of paper used to place orders in the kitchen. The drawings usually take about a week to make, all the while also being used by fellow employees to take orders; this sometimes leads to other collaborators or in a couple cases, to the loss of the work. The drawings are then scanned and colored in Photoshop where they come to life in stunning technicolor! The subject matter varies from piece to piece, as they are made over a long course of time and under various moods and states of mind. They all retain a playfulness that serves as a coping mechanism after spending a night catering to the endless needs of hungry patrons.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

#21 "Untitled Number 21" July 30, 2010

(Click on the image to see a larger version)

This is the first one that really utilized the wine stain. I'm not saying that we used it as well as we could have, but I am pretty sure that this is the first one where the stain on the dupe pad was actually incorporated into the drawing. Since this one, we have not only used current wine stains, but have colored with wine, bitters and most recently, Tabasco. As I have mentioned before, these pads that we draw on go through a lot of wear and tear before I can bring them home and scan them into the digital realm. Every minute they are at the Loup they are working. Obviously, not literally, but they are our tool. They become drawings slowly and over sometimes long periods of time. This one was around for at least a month. When all the pages had been used to order frites and carpaccio, burgers with cheddar and chicken paiard; once the pages were all ripped out and sent to the kitchen, this one stuck around for quite a while. The wine stain was the last thing we drew inside of to complete this one. It had been around for probably a month and the wine stain sat outlined and naked on the inside. We just couldn't figure out what to do with it. Even now, it's pretty lame what we did, but at least we put an eye on it and made it some sort of living thing. Sometimes it's easy to see a shape and figure out what that shape it. You can look at the sky and see a Bear riding a tricycle in the clouds every day. Other times, you look and look and look and you only see a stain. This one was Dien's favorite. Not the wine stain, the little person ( I will call her a girl from here on out, although you'll have to ask Tim whether or not that is true) on the far left with the white-out face. He just couldn't get enough of her. Dien doesn't really pay attention to these drawings that Tim and I do. He will look at them occasionally and comment on them on even rarer occasions. It's funny, too, because these dupe pads are his main source of ordering food from the kitchen. He looks at them more than anyone working at the Loup, save Tim and I. As waiters, we have our own, separate triple dupe pads that look different from these ones. The dupe pads we draw on for all of these drawings are primarily used by the bartenders. So much so, that when you see just the color of the paper in the kitchen, nine times out of ten you automatically bring the food on the order slip to the bar. It is the bartenders ordering form. Tim and I have merely adopted them as our own. But again, not until they are actually in my apartment are they truely ours. Every minute they sit in Cafe Loup, they are public property (actually Lloyd "owns" them since he bought them, but you know what I'm saying). So the fact that Dien really loved this one was amusing to me. Every day I worked with him and this drawing was around, he would show it to me with a big grin on his face, as if I had not noticed it. He would say something like, "I don't know why I like this little person so much, but I really love it." He would gaze at it for a long time even when he was supposed to be making drinks. It was incredible. Dien is a very complex man, and he showed another side of his personality when this drawing showed up. In fact, I don't think he has commented or shown the least bit of interest in any of the drawings since then. He just doesn't notice them anymore. They have become as much a part of his Cafe Loup life as the pictures on the wall. The pictures change places sometimes, but they are always the same pictures. That's one of the great things about the Cafe Loup. No matter what happens on the outside, the inside remains the same. 

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